Jewell Parker Rhodes is the author of numerous books for young readers, including Ghost Boys; Black Brother, Black Brother; and Towers Falling. She is the recipient of the Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Octavia E. Butler Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination, among other accolades. Kelly McWilliams is the author of YA novels such as Agnes at the End of the World, Mirror Girls, and Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay. We asked the mother-daughter duo to discuss their first picture book collaboration, Soul Step, illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu, and the joys of traditional African American dance.
Kelly McWilliams: We wrote a picture book—our first ever! And, we’re related.
Jewell Parker Rhodes: Mother and daughter.
McWilliams: So, who’s to blame for this?
Rhodes: Me! The book’s called Soul Step. It focuses on a form of percussive dance passed down through the generations in Black communities. Now, I’ve always wanted to write about step, but back in 2020, I got stuck. I’d already sold the idea for the story, but I just couldn’t figure out how to write it. I was about to give the money back to the publisher!
McWilliams: So, you called Ghostbusters, which is me, ha!
Rhodes: And what you did is capture the rhythm of step in print, which is something I struggled with.
McWilliams: You’re the genius author of Towers Falling. I just had a four-year-old at the time! A four-year old daughter I was teaching how to be a child of color in America, just as you taught me and my brother way back when.
Rhodes: And because it was during the Black Lives Matter movement, and we were all in deep mourning, you took Soul Step in an interesting direction. It became a story about a girl coming to understand how her mother keeps her soul joyful despite aggression and microaggression in this country—how she keeps her soul right.
McWilliams: Right. And this mama—she steps. When a white lady touches her hair in the grocery store—
Rhodes: Or when the police ask her if she belongs in this neighborhood—
McWilliams: When anything like that happens, she puts on her dancing shoes and steps right in her kitchen. That’s a loud, powerful dance. And her daughter wants to know: Why? How does step help her mama after she’s had a hard day? What is she witnessing—and what does it mean?
Rhodes: She goes on a journey of discovery, asking all these strong women in her life about this traditional counter-motion... and that’s a journey we all have to take, in some way or another. We uphold traditions like churchgoing, storytelling, and dancing to survive—and to stay connected to one another, too, because we’re all children of the diaspora. We don’t all live in the same place, and we don’t all look the same!
McWilliams: We’re a mixed-race family, ourselves.
Rhodes: As a people, we’re all a mixed-blood stew, and yet we nurture the same seeds of hope in our children. We engage with the same traditions. And step is one of the oldest traditions out there, with roots going all the way back to Africa. I believe there’s a little of step’s power in everything we do.
McWilliams: Did you step, as a young person?
Rhodes: I couldn’t! I never had the access. But I was a professional dancer, and percussive forms always spoke to me. You remember seeing Stomp or Alvin Ailey. You remember the drum lines and marching bands and second lines in New Orleans. My very first book featured dancing in the Congo Square.
McWilliams: It’s been incredible today to watch step have its renaissance. Kids step in schools, now, and not just in college—middle and elementary schools! Step was a plot on the show Abbott Elementary... and of course we had Beyoncé’s marvelous Homecoming, along with a wash of new movies and media.
Rhodes: And let’s all thank goodness for YouTube, and the academic writing on step today. There’s wonderful research about Black artistry!
McWilliams: And hip-hop! That rose right out of step, too.
Rhodes: That’s right. And what I think is so powerful about it is that at the end of the day, step dance, where you use your own body as an instrument, is actually a way of reclaiming that body. A way to say, I’m free, I’m me, and I’m not on the ground. I’m up and dancing—joyfully.
McWilliams: It’s a counter-image. A counter narrative to Black suffering and oppression.
Rhodes: It’s who we are. Who we all are. That strength we’ve passed down.
McWilliams: And our wonderful illustrator, Briana Mukodiri Uchendu, captured the rhythm and motion of strength. She’s responsible for all this vibrancy and color on the page.
Rhodes: She did glorious work. Beyond our wildest dreams.
McWilliams: It is a dream, isn’t it? To have this opportunity to shine a spotlight on a crucial source of our light, as a people. A source of our resistance and persistence.
Rhodes: And to do it for the youngest, most precious members of our community—our little children, and the grown folk who raise them.
McWilliams: I think we better leave it there, don’t you?
Rhodes: We better stop before we write another picture book!
McWilliams: After all these years, it was an honor, wasn’t it?
Rhodes: Oh, yes. It truly was. I couldn’t have done it without you! We’re a great team.
Soul Step by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Kelly McWilliams, illus. by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. Little, Brown, $18.99 June 4 ISBN 978-0-316-56271-3
